A very important event took place on Thursday in the Collin County community and the Dallas Stars were proud to be part of it.

After years of planning and building, Children’s Medical Center Legacy celebrated its completion with a grand ribbon-cutting event on the new campus in Plano.

The dream of Children's Legacy launched into a reality because of the support of 51 founding families and organizations that committed at least $100,000 to the $15 million “wePromise” capital campaign to build, equip and staff Children's Legacy.

The Dallas Stars Foundation is proud to be one of those 51 organizations, having pledged $250,000 to match a similar pledge made by Love For Children, Inc. to Children’s Legacy. The $250,000 gift is the largest in history for the Dallas Stars Foundation.

The combined $500,000 pledge has funded a 1,282 square-foot family great room in the new pediatric hospital. The family great room is part of the family-centered care that Children’s provides to its patients and families.

"As a private, not-for-profit pediatric hospital, gifts from the community are crucial to helping us fulfill our mission," said T. W. Hudson Akin, executive vice president of development at Children's. "We are grateful to the Dallas Stars Foundation for coming along side us and understanding the importance and the value of a Family Great Room at Children's Legacy and then co-funding it with Love for Children to make it a reality."

The family great room is subdivided into three areas: a play area, a study and a family room. The play area will allow each child to play at will and socialize, while temporarily escaping the constraints of their visit. The family area will serve as a haven for parents to watch their children in the play area or gather with other family members. The study area will serve as a private conversation room or business center for parents to check in at their offices, work while in the close proximity of their ailing children and privately take care of family business.

Stars President Jeff Cogen, co-GM Brett Hull and other members of management from the hockey club were on hand for Thursday’s celebration ceremony at Children’s Legacy. The Stars group also got a brief tour of the newest wing of the facility that includes the family great room that was a result of the Foundation Grant given by the team.

“It was exciting to see the room in-person. It is beautiful,” said Carla Rosenberg, executive director of the Dallas Stars Foundation. “We value our strong relationship with Children’s Medical Center and we look forward to working with them on many other worthy efforts in the future.”

The land on which Children's Legacy is located, 7601 Preston Road – at the corner of Hedgcoxe and Preston roads – was purchased in 2001. The facility itself, a 184,000-square-foot, $147 million project, was built with patients and their families in mind. Every patient room has large windows to the outside for children and their families to view the natural beauty of the fields, streams and horses on the 155-acre property.

Christopher J. Durovich, president and chief executive officer of Children's Medical Center, thanked many people and organizations in the community for helping Legacy become a reality.

"The tradition of providing world-class pediatric healthcare has been under construction for 95 years at Children's Medical Center," Durovich said. "Tradition here at Children's Medical Center Legacy has been under construction for three years, but it is the beneficiary of the long-standing mission, values and service to the community that have been our hallmarks.

"Today, we celebrate this next step in our work-in-progress as we fulfill our promise to bring world-class, high-quality academic and pediatric healthcare to the children of North Texas."

Area students take part in celebration

Students from two Plano middle schools helped conclude the ceremony on Thursday. Cheerleaders from Hendrick Middle School led a countdown for the ribbon cutting as band members from Rice Middle School played a drum roll. More than 50 area children equipped with safety scissors put an exclamation point on the ceremony by simultaneously cutting a 100-foot-long red ribbon.

From left, Ralph and Susan Stow, parents and Plano community members; Christopher J. Durovich, president and chief executive officer of Children's; and John L. Adams, chairman of the board of Children's, prepare to cut the red ribbon with the help of dozens of children.

Children's now extends its world-class pediatric care closer to the homes of children living in Collin, Cooke, Denton, Fannin and Grayson counties. In opening the new hospital, Children's Medical Center, an almost-100-year-old pediatric healthcare provider in Dallas, becomes the only academic healthcare system in the region focused solely on pediatrics.

The hospital opens with 24 inpatient beds, emergency services, four operating rooms, four procedure rooms and dedicated transport services. Ancillary services, such as Laboratory and Radiology, also operate 24 hours a day.

The Children's Legacy Ambulatory Care Pavilion, which moved to the new hospital campus in April, has been providing outpatient services in Plano for the past two years and offers the largest suburban group of pediatric specialists in the nation.